PulseAudio is a sound server commonly used by desktop environments like GNOME or KDE. It serves as a proxy to sound applications using existing kernel sound components like ALSA or OSS. Since ALSA is included in Arch Linux by default, the most common deployment scenarios include PulseAudio with ALSA.

Optional KDE plasma applet: kdemultimedia-kmix and kdeplasma-applets-veromixAUR (If KMix/Veromix fail to connect to PulseAudio at boot you may need to edit /etc/pulse/client.conf to include autospawn = yes instead of autospawn = no.)

Running

Warning: If you have per-user copies of configuration files (such as client.conf, daemon.conf or default.pa) in ~/.config/pulse/ or ~/.pulse/, make sure you keep them in sync with changes to the packaged files in /etc/pulse/. Otherwise, PulseAudio may refuse to start due to configuration errors.

If PulseAudio is not running and users are using X, the following will start PulseAudio with the needed the X11 plugins manually:

$ start-pulseaudio-x11

If you are not running GNOME, KDE, or Xfce, and your ~/.xinitrc does not source the scripts in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d (such as is done in the example file /etc/skel/.xinitrc), then you can launch PulseAudio on boot with:

To prevent applications from using ALSA's OSS emulation and bypassing PulseAudio (thereby preventing other applications from playing sound), make sure the module snd_pcm_oss is not being loaded at boot. If it is currently loaded (lsmod | grep oss), disable it by executing:

# rmmod snd_pcm_oss

ALSA/dmix without grabbing hardware device

Note: This section describes alternative configuration, which is generally not recommended.

You may want to use ALSA directly in most of your applications and to be able to use other applications, which constantly require PulseAudio at the same time. The following steps allow you to make PulseAudio use dmix instead of grabbing ALSA hardware device.

Remove package pulseaudio-alsa, which provides compatibility layer between ALSA applications and PulseAudio. After this your ALSA apps will use ALSA directly without being hooked by Pulse.

Applications

KDE Plasma Workspaces and Qt4

PulseAudio will automatically be used by KDE/Qt4 applications. It is supported by default in the KDE sound mixer. For more information see the KDE page in the PulseAudio wiki. One useful tidbit from that page is to add load-module module-device-manager to /etc/pulse/default.pa.

If the phonon-gstreamer backend is used for Phonon, GStreamer should also be configured as described in #GStreamer.

Audacious

Audacious natively supports PulseAudio. In order to use it, set Audacious Preferences -> Audio -> Current output plugin to 'PulseAudio Output Plugin'.

Music Player Daemon (MPD)

MPlayer

MPlayer natively supports PulseAudio output with the -ao pulse option. It can also be configured to default to PulseAudio output, in ~/.mplayer/config for per-user, or /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf for system-wide:

/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

ao=pulse

Skype (x86_64 only)

Install lib32-libpulse, otherwise the following error will occur when trying to initiate a call: "Problem with Audio Playback".

guvcview

guvcview when using the PulseAudio input from a Webcam may have the audio input suspended resulting in no audio being recorded. You can check this by executing:

$ pactl list sources

If the audio source is "suspended" then modifying the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa and changing:

load-module module-suspend-on-idle

to

#load-module module-suspend-on-idle

And then either restarting PulseAudio or your computer will only idle the input source instead of suspending it. guvcview will then correctly record audio from the device.

Troubleshooting

No sound after install

Muted audio device

If one experiences no audio output via any means while using ALSA, attempt to unmute the sound card. To do this, launch alsamixer and make sure each column has a green 00 under it (this can be toggled by pressing m):

$ alsamixer -c 0

Note: alsamixer will not tell you which output device is set as the default. One possible cause of no sound after install is that PulseAudio detects the wrong output device as a default. Install pavucontrol and check if there is any output on the pavucontrol panel when playing a .wav file.

If you find audio from flash is being laggy, you might like to have flash access ALSA directly. This fixes this problem in some cases. To do this, configure PulseAudio to use dmix.

No cards

If PulseAudio starts, run pacmd list. If no cards are reported, make sure that the ALSA devices are not in use:

$ fuser -v /dev/snd/*
$ fuser -v /dev/dsp

Make sure any applications using the pcm or dsp files are shut down before restarting PulseAudio.

The only device shown is "dummy output"

This may be caused by different reasons, one of them being the .asoundrc file in $HOME is taking precedence over the systemwide /etc/asound.conf.

The user file is modified also by the tool asoundconf or by its graphical variant asoundconf-gtk (the latter is named "Default sound card" in the menu) as soon as it runs. Prevent the effects of .asoundrc altogether by commenting the last line like this:

No HDMI 5/7.1 Selection for Device

KDE Plasma Workspaces

It may be that another output device set as preferred in phonon. Make sure that every setting reflects the preferred output device at the top, and check the playback streams tab in kmix to make sure that applications are using the device for output.

To see your default audio device, you can run:

pactl stat

To see available audio devices:

pactl list

To set your default audio device, use "pacmd" or add to /etc/pulse/default.pa:

set-default-sink alsa_output.analog-stereo

Failed to create sink input: sink is suspended

If you do not have any output sound and receive dozens of errors related to a suspended sink in your journalctl -b log, then backup first and then delete your user-specific pulse folders:

$ rm -r ~/.pulse ~/.pulse-cookie

No HDMI sound output after some time with the monitor turned off

The monitor is connected via HDMI/DisplayPort, and the audio jack is plugged in the headphone jack of the monitor, but PulseAudio insists that it is unplugged:

This leads to no sound coming from HDMI output. A workaround for this is to switch to another TTY and back again. This problem has been reported by ATI/Nvidia/Intel users.

Can't update configuration of sound device in pavucontrol

pavucontrol is a handy GUI utility for configuring PulseAudio. Under its 'Configuration' tab, you can select different profiles for each of your sound devices e.g. analogue stereo, digital output (IEC958), HDMI 5.1 Surround etc.

However, you may run into an instance where selecting a different profile for a card results in the pulse daemon crashing and auto restarting without the new selection "sticking". If this occurs, use the other useful GUI tool, paprefs, to check under the "Simultaneous Output" tab for a virtual simultaneous device. If this setting is active (checked), it will prevent you changing any card's profile in pavucontrol. Uncheck this setting, then adjust your profile in pavucontrol prior to re-enabling simultaneous output in paprefs.

Simultaneous output to multiple sound cards / devices

Simultaneous output to two different devices can be very useful. For example, being able to send audio to your A/V receiver via your graphics card's HDMI output, while also sending the same audio through the analogue output of your motherboard's built-in audio. This is much less hassle than it used to be (in this example, we are using GNOME desktop).

Using paprefs, simply select "Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards" from under the "Simultaneous Output" tab. Then, under GNOME's "sound settings", select the simultaneous output you have just created.

If this doesn't work, try adding the following to ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.dsp {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
}

Simultaneous output to multiple sinks on the same sound card not working

This can be useful for users who have multiple sound sources and want to play them on different sinks/outputs.
An example use-case for this would be if you play music and also voice chat and want to output music to speakers (in this case Digital S/PDIF) and voice to headphones. (Analog)

This is sometimes auto detected by PulseAudio but not always. If you know that your sound card can output to both Analog and S/PDIF at the same time and PulseAudio does not have this option in it's profiles in pavucontrol, or veromix then you probably need to create a configuration file for your sound card.

More in detail you need to create a profile-set for your specific sound card.
This is done in two steps mostly.

Now, create a configuration file. If you bother, you can start from scratch and make it saucy. However you can also use the default configuration file, rename it, and then add your profile there that you know works. Less pretty but also faster.

To enable multiple sinks for Asus Xonar Essence STX you need only to add this in.

Note: asus-xonar-essence-stx.conf also includes all code/mappings from default.conf.

Bluetooth headset replay problems

Some user reports huge delays or even no sound when the Bluetooth connection does not send any data. This is due to the module-suspend-on-idle module, which automatically suspends sinks/sources on idle. As this can cause problems with headset, the responsible module can be deactivated.

To disable loading of the module-suspend-on-idle module, comment out the following line in the configuration file in use (~/.config/pulse/default.pa or /etc/pulse/default.pa):

~/.config/pulse/default.pa

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle

Finally restart PulseAudio to apply the changes.

Automatically switch to Bluetooth or USB headset

Pulse overwrites ALSA settings

PulseAudio usually overwrites the ALSA settings — for example set with alsamixer — at start-up, even when the ALSA daemon is loaded. Since there seems to be no other way to restrict this behaviour, a workaround is to restore the ALSA settings again after PulseAudio has started. Add the following command to .xinitrc or .bash_profile or any other autostart file:

Prevent Pulse from restarting after being killed

Sometimes you may wish to temporarily disable Pulse. In order to do so you will have to prevent Pulse from restarting after being killed.

~/.config/pulse/client.conf

# Disable autospawning the PulseAudio daemon
autospawn = no

Daemon startup failed

Try resetting PulseAudio:

$ rm -rf /tmp/pulse* ~/.pulse*
$ pulseaudio -k
$ pulseaudio --start

If there is no server running but PulseAudio fails to start with an error message "User-configured server at ... refusing to start/autospawn", the issue may be with PulseAudio settings from a previous login. Check to see if there are any stale properties attached to the X11 root window with pax11publish -d, and if there are, remove them with pax11publish -r before trying to start the server. This manual cleanup is always required when using LXDM because it does not restart the X server on logout; see LXDM#PulseAudio.

inotify issue

If the previous fix doesn't work, see if you get an error like this:

$ pulseaudio -vvvv

E: [pulseaudio] module-udev-detect.c: You apparently ran out of inotify watches, probably because Tracker/Beagle took them all away. I wished people would do their homework first and fix inotify before using it for watching whole directory trees which is something the current inotify is certainly not useful for. Please make sure to drop the Tracker/Beagle guys a line complaining about their broken use of inotify.

Restart the PulseAudio daemon (4/4)

Laggy sound

Either disable any modifications (if any) to these entries, or, if issue still exists, uncomment:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5

Choppy, overdriven sound

Choppy sound in PulseAudio can result from wrong settings for the sample rate. Try:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

default-sample-rate = 48000

and restart the PulseAudio server.

If one experiences choppy sound in applications using openAL, change the sample rate in /etc/openal/alsoft.conf:

frequency = 48000

Setting the PCM volume above 0 dB can cause clipping of the audio signal. Running alsamixer -c0 will allow you to see if this is the problem and if so fix it. Note that ALSA may not correctly export the dB information to PulseAudio. Try:

Volume adjustment does not work properly

If the volume does not appear to increment/decrement properly using alsamixer or amixer, it may be due to PulseAudio having a larger number of increments (65537 to be exact). Try using larger values when changing volume (e.g. amixer set Master 655+).

Per-application volumes change when the Master volume is adjusted

This is because PulseAudio uses flat volumes by default, instead of relative volumes, relative to an absolute master volume. If this is found to be inconvenient, asinine, or otherwise undesireable, relative volumes can be enabled by disabling flat volumes in the PulseAudio daemon's configuration file:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

flat-volumes = no

and then restarting PulseAudio by executing

$ pulseaudio -k
$ pulseaudio --start

Volume gets louder every time a new application is started

Per default, it seems as if changing the volume in an application sets the global system volume to that level instead of only affecting the respective application. Applications setting their volume on startup will therefore cause the system volume to "jump".

Fix this by disabling flat volumes, as demonstrated in the previous section. When Pulse comes back after a few seconds, applications will not alter the global system volume anymore but have their own volume level again.

Note: A previously installed and removed pulseaudio-equalizer may leave behind remnants of the setup in ~/.pulse/default.pa which can also cause maximized volume trouble. Comment that out as needed.

No microphone on ThinkPad T400/T500/T420

Run:

alsamixer -c 0

Unmute and maximize the volume of the "Internal Mic".

Once you see the device with:

arecord -l

you might still need to adjust the settings. The microphone and the audio jack are duplexed. Set the configuration of the internal audio in pavucontrol to Analog Stereo Duplex.

Static noise in microphone recording

If we are getting static noise in Skype, gnome-sound-recorder, arecord, etc.'s recordings, then the sound card sample rate is incorrect. That is why there is static noise in Linux microphone recordings. To fix this, we need to set the sampling rate in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf for the sound hardware.

Subwoofer stops working after end of every song

To fix this, must edit: /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and enable enable-lfe-remixing :

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

enable-lfe-remixing = yes

PulseAudio uses wrong microphone

If PulseAudio uses the wrong microphone, and changing the Input Device with Pavucontrol did not help, take a look at alsamixer. It seems that Pavucontrol does not always set the input source correctly.

$ alsamixer

Press F6 and choose your sound card, e.g. HDA Intel. Now press F5 to display all items. Try to find the item: Input Source. With the up/down arrow keys you are able to change the input source.

Now try if the correct microphone is used for recording.

Choppy sound with analog surround sound setup

The low-frequency effects (LFE) channel is not remixed per default. To enable it the following needs to be set in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf :

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

enable-lfe-remixing = yes

Unable to select surround configuration other than "Surround 4.0"

If you're unable to set 5.1 surround output in pavucontrol because it only shows "Analog Surround 4.0 Output", open the ALSA mixer and change the output configuration there to 6 channels. Then restart pulseaudio, and pavucontrol will list many more options.

If changing the volume in specific applications or simply running an application changes the master output volume this is likely due to flat volumes mode of pulseaudio. Before disabling it, KDE users should try lowering their system notifications volume in System Settings -> Application and System Notifications -> Manage Notifications under the Player Settings tab to something reasonable. Changing the Event Sounds volume in KMix or another volume mixer application will not help here. This should make the flat-volumes mode work out as intended, if it does not work, some other application is likely requesting 100% volume when its playing something. If all else fails, you can try to disable flat-volumes:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

flat-volumes = no

Then restart PulseAudio daemon:

# pulseaudio -k
# pulseaudio --start

Realtime scheduling

If rtkit does not work, you can manually set up your system to run PulseAudio with real-time scheduling, which can help performance. To do this, add the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf:

@pulse-rt - rtprio 9
@pulse-rt - nice -11

Afterwards, you need to add your user to the pulse-rt group:

# gpasswd -a <user> pulse-rt

No sound after resume from suspend

If audio generally works, but stops after resume from suspend, try "reloading" PulseAudio by executing:

$ /usr/bin/pasuspender /bin/true

This is better than completely killing and restarting it (pulseaudio -k followed by pulseaudio --start), because it doesn't break already running applications.

If the above fixes your problem, you may wish to automate it, by creating a systemd service file.

1. Create the template service file in /etc/systemd/system/resume-fix-pulseaudio@.service:

ALSA channels mute when headphones are plugged/unplugged improperly

If when you unplug your headphones or plug them in the audio remains muted in alsamixer on the wrong channel due to it being set to 0%, you may be able to fix it by opening /etc/pulse/default.pa and commenting out the line:

Daemon already running

On some systems, PulseAudio may be started multiple times. journalctl will report:

[pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.

Make sure to use only one method of autostarting applications. pulseaudio includes these files:

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/pulseaudio

/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop

/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio-kde.desktop

Also check user autostart files and directories, such as xinitrc, ~/.config/autostart/ etc.

Fallback device is not respected

PulseAudio does not have a true default device. Instead it uses a "fallback", which only applies to new sound streams. This means previously run applications are not affected by the newly set fallback device.

1. Move the old streams in pavucontrol manually to the new sound card.

2. Stop Pulse, erase the "stream-volumes" in ~/.pulse and restart Pulse. This also resets application volumes.

3. Disable stream device reading. This may be not wanted when using different soundcards with different applications.

/etc/pulse/defaults.pa

load-module module-stream-restore restore_device=false

No Microphone on Steam or Skype if you set enable-remixing = no

When you set enable-remixing = no on /etc/pulse/daemon.conf you may find that your microphone has stopped working on certain applications like Skype or Steam. This happens because these applications capture the microphone as mono only and because remixing is disabled, Pulseaudio will no longer remix your stereo microphone to mono.

Note: Pulseaudio may fail to start if you don't exit a program that was using was using the microphone (ex. if you tested on Steam before modifying the file), in which case you should exit the application and manually start Pulseaudio: